On the Olympics
Those who followed me back in the stone ages of The Conservative Wahoo blog, the keen ones at least, will remember my quadrennial (or is it biennial…one never knows when an Olympics might break out these days) rants about the Olympics, and since a whole new generation of far more groovy people read me on this substack, I feel I have to acquaint you with my signature moves, among which is the Olympic rant.
Like any wholesome American boy of my age, I grew up loving the Olympics. My earliest Olympic memory was watching my father blow a gasket in 1972 when the Russians beat our basketball team under dubious circumstances. In 1976, I stayed up to watch what is still my favorite Olympic memory of all, Franz Klammer’s downhill run to win it all. I ingested it all, both for the sport and for the patriotism.
But over time, like much of my life, my love for the Olympics became alloyed with the formative ideological impulse of my life, conservatism. And round about 1984 when my conservatism was in its infancy, I began to question the inclusion of “new” sports in the games, both as events and exhibitions. Synchronized swimming? Rhythmic gymnastics? Baseball, golf, and softball? The list goes on, and in the intervening 37 years I have refined my curmudgeonly disdain for the Olympics to a razor’s edge against the whetstone of the silly inclusion of ridiculous spectacles.
(Brief refrain here. I’m going to admit something now that some of you will read and say, “duh”, some of you will say “damn, that is so unfortunate”, but I imagine many of you will read and be caused to ask yourself some inconvenient questions. The admission is this: most of who I am today as a 56 year old man was accreted, fashioned, annealed, and cast in the first 25 years of my life, and while I’ve learned a number of hard lessons in the intervening 31 years, there hasn’t been a great deal of change. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a SHADE less aggressive, maybe a TINY bit less direct, perhaps a BIT less ambitious, and sometimes I LISTEN a little more closely, but I’m kinda the same. My Olympic tastes are obviously stuck in the 80’s, as are my musical tastes, although I have added both opera and classical to my preferences in the last few decades, but in grand conservative style, I am REDISCOVERING old things rather than acquiring new. Where are you? Are you much different?)
I follow the Olympics mainly on social media, and watch very little of it. In no small measure, this is because the coverage is unwatchable, with so very little actual, you know, movement, and so much mandolin-accompanied, human interest BS filling the time in between commercials demonstrating to an increasingly rotting world how wonderful and dynamic and inclusive and wonderful we are. Whilst on the treadmill this morning, the televisions all were on some variant of Olympic coverage, with the one closest to me just taunting me with yet another insipid “sport”, 3 on 3 Basketball. You’ve got to be shitting me. As tragedy becomes farce, we almost certainly will have kickball and dodgeball joining the Olympic games someday soon.
One other thing. On the question of “politics” in the Olympic games. A friend of mine has had a bit of a running commentary on his Facebook page on this issue, and I have watched the to and fro in amusement. His position is, broadly summarized, that “politics” have no place in the Olympics, and he has a number of folks piping up in support and opposition. I have not joined the fray, as I use Facebook for purposes other than arguing with idiots (such as posting pictures of my cats sleeping and wondrous meals I’ve created, you know, important stuff). But here’s the thing. The Olympic Games is at its essence, a political event. Contestants do not show up as individuals to compete with each other. They show up as representatives of nations to compete with each other, nations delineated from each other by political/geographic boundaries. The very units of competition are political entities. I fear that anyone wishing for an elimination of politics from the Olympics is going to be sadly disappointed, especially in an age of the political individual manifesting itself though various identities.
Back in the United Lounge
I do a little traveling for my job, or at least I did before COVID. I have preferred travel brands (United, Marriott, Hertz), and over the years choosing to stick with one over another has paid dividends in points, upgrades, etc. I am a big fan of United Lounges, and on the few flights I’ve taken through the great pandemic, I’ve been disappointed to find the United Lounges closed wherever I’ve been. Today (Sunday, 25 July) I am writing this from a state of travel bliss in the Dulles lounge, D Terminal. The lounge is open, the cappuccino is hot, and all is wonderful once again except for the mindless drone sitting across from my Facetiming with her mother “because she is bored”. I am convinced that 80% of all mobile conversations are inspired by this same vapid impulse, as apparently picking up a book or magazine (or drafting a Substack!) isn’t among this person’s options. To his credit, her father just “shushed” her as she was describing to her mother the impending discomfort of the first class seat, as “even though it, like, reclines all the way, if feels like a little cage.”
I flew out of Terminal D in May, and there is a good bit more activity here today than there was then. Dining options were poor then, but seem to have improved. I managed a passable French Dip, which hopefully will tide me over until I’m asleep at midnight. Wearing a mask for hours on end still blows, but you gotta do what you gotta do. My fellow Americans have always had a habit of exposing their noses when “wearing” masks, and the practice seems more widespread than ever nearly 20 months into this crisis. Variant “D” is all the rage in the social media milieu, fueled largely by mouth-breathers who maintain silly notions of liberty and rights. Let’s face it…there are people with reasonable excuses for not getting the vaccine. But there aren’t many. And with nearly 70% of American adults having at least one shot, the soul-less GOP has begun to get a little louder about people getting inoculated, as I think they think that if this thing continues, it could become a BIG issue in 2022, with normals blaming them for enabling the vaccine ignorant.
The Facetimer across from me has ended her conversation, thank goodness. I managed to monitor most of it from my six feet of space, and while a considerable number of words were spoken, very little information was conveyed.